Not My Mission
by Pheather McKelle
Summary: In the process of trying to track down all his tormentors, Bucky stumbles on an organization which takes in other super soldiers gone AWOL and rehabilitates them. But not all is as it seems in his new home, and even after his memories are restored, there are still questions left unanswered, and the appearance of someone least expected throws everything into doubt. [T for violence]
1. Chapter 1

**Not My Mission**

**A Captain America Fanfiction**

**by Pheather McKelle**

**A/N - **_Some story I wrote during a writer's block. Enjoy!_

_So apparently there's formatting issues? This is happening to a lot of my stories and I'm not quite sure why. Anyways, thanks to the person who pointed it out, else I probably wouldn't have noticed. :P_

**Chapter 1**

Not part of the mission.

Not part of the mission.

_Not part of the mission._

They traded flurries of blows and countermoves faster than the eye could see, each attempting to expose a weakness in the other. He had gone so long without a proper sparring partner that the opponent's expertise almost took him by surprise.

Almost.

With a sidestep and a duck, the Winter Soldier effectively knocked the opponent to the ground, the breath whooshing from his lungs as his back collided with the floor. He groaned, attempting to roll over, but the Winter Soldier planted his heavy boot on his chest. With his left arm, he curled his fingers in the opponent's collar and hoisted him up so he dangled a good foot above the ground. With thick, clumsy fingers, the opponent attempted to pry his grip away, but the Winter Soldier slammed him against the wall. The opponent was garbed entirely in loose-fitting black clothing, including his head. Only his eyes could be seen through sheer black fabric.

A pang of foreign emotion struck the Winter Soldier as snippets of memory flashed through his tattered, ruined mind. A man on a bridge. Red white and blue. _Bucky_. He snarled, attempting to regain control of himself, but he found he couldn't. That had always been handled. There had always been others. That wasn't his job.

Not part of the mission.

But now that was all gone, and he had to make due. As blundering and clueless as a newborn child, he wrestled together a few scraps of memory, bound them with frustration, and stuffed them in the back of his mind. He was so busy trying to piece himself together that he didn't notice the second opponent until the knife was at his regrettably exposed throat. It was short and thick, serrated near the grip. It was a survival knife, not an assassin's knife. But the opponent wielding it was probably far from incompetent, if the first opponent had any skill to judge by.

"Drop him." This opponent was female. Her voice was lower than the other female opponents he had killed. She was also taller. When he hesitated, she applied more pressure on the knife, drawing blood. It dripped down the contours of his neck, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Slowly, his metallic fingers unclenched, and the male opponent slouched to the floor. The female opponent kept her knife to his throat. A quick line in an unknown language was spoken from her, and the male answered.

While the male opponent was stumbling to his feet, the female bound his arms with a generous amount of duct tape one-handed, keeping the other at his throat. While his robotic prosthetic did not feel the cut in circulation, his real arm certainly did, and his fingers quickly prickled from lack of oxygen. Forcing him to the ground, the male held his chest down and tugged a hood over his head while the female bound his feet and removed all weapons. It was a meager arsenal. A knife and two glocks, three ammunition magazines, and one flash grenade. He used to have an RPG, but it had been lost when he dived into the water…

When had he dived into water? As the two opponents bundled him in the back of a pickup truck, the Winter Soldier tried to recall why he was at that particular fishing shack. He knew that the owner _should_ have been in connection to his current mental state, but why had he dived into water? And who were these two new opponents?

Several more flashes of discombobulated memories flashed through his mind, causing his head to ache. He grimaced and rolled to a more comfortable position to try and unravel this latest mystery.

He resorted to a mantra of sorts: remember the earliest thing. He always went to the same memory: a face. Not of particular importance, just some woman walking down a street, probably in the early forties before he was drafted. Before the serum. She was just one in a sea of faces, but his pain-dulled and deranged mind had pulled hers out from the masses, and she was his earliest memory.

After that, a snippet of a train, the feeling of cold, and a sharp phantom pain in his robotic arm, which no longer felt any sensation. Fighting. Lots of fighting. Red Room. Then a cold metal box, a blast of freezing water, then nothing. It was all black space, empty shelves where thoughts used to sit, until several months ago, when the Man on the Bridge first appeared. Called him Bucky. _That_ he remembered. Bucky struck some inner cord of his being. It felt familiar, like a forgotten childhood sweater. But one that smelled old and damp. One that he wished he could discard. That man and his name were no more than a hinderance.

Brushing aside that thought, he swam through murky indistinct waters until the flash of the Man's face, bruised and bleeding, sharp and clear as crystal, loomed in front of him. This memory was different, because an emotion came with it: guilt.

Which was strange, because the Winter Soldier rarely experienced guilt. In fact, in his own memory, he had never felt any guilt whatsoever. But looking at the Bridge Man's face was enough to make him want to apologize. He had caused that man pain, something he swore-

What did he swear?

He groped around like a blind fool, desperately grabbing at the flimsiest of thoughts, attempting to find that missing gap. Like the name of someone on the tip of your tongue or a fact just out of reach, it eluded him, vanishing as soon as it appeared.

That was how the mantra usually ended: with him chasing phantom thoughts through the confines of his mind, which only led down deeper and darker branches that he was too scared to explore, fearful of what might be at the other end.

Rough hands grabbed his shoulders and snapped him awake from his rivier. The hauled him upright, dragged him off the truck, and slung him over their shoulders like a prize buck they had just shot. He felt as helpless as an oversized caterpillar, wriggling against inexorable forces that sought to control him.

He felt himself enter a building, and was then hauled to an elevator. The descent was smooth and he barely felt the lurch in his stomach as it dropped. The air seemed to grow progressively warmer the further down they went until it was pleasantly toasty. They proceeded down a hallway, then turned down another. They stopped and one captor knocked on a door. Someone inside grunted an affirmative, which was muted from the hood, and the male captor led him inside.

He was deposited in a chair and he felt his appendages being bound to it. The hood was removed and he was in a well-lit room. One side was just windows which looked out over a limestone cave, lit at intervals with spotlights that made the natural variations in the stone's color shine and sparkle like they were speckled with diamonds. The room itself was sparsely decorated, with a simple mahogany desk opposite him, a chair, and an occupant.

The man sitting in the chair had neat black hair peppered with silver, and a crisp white shirt tucked into black pants. He wore a restrained yet dignified expression, and though his age looked to be approaching fifty, he was well-muscled and fit.

"So this is the Winter Soldier?" the man stood slowly, a wary look in his eye, as if a trussed-up wild animal were tied to his chair and not a man.

"We lured him to the fishing shack by the bridge." the female captor explained. The Winter Soldier silently cursed himself. How could he be so stupid? That man was probably long-gone by now. _Of all the traps to fall for!_ The man barely acknowledged them, eyeing him over with intensity.

"I'll debrief him from here, you can go rest." the man said, not unkindly. The two captors nodded and left on silent feet. As soon as the door closed, the man snapped his attention to the Winter Soldier. He glared back, willing him to make a mistake.

"A lot of recruits are suspicious at first. It's only natural." he began, walking back to sit on his desk, clasping his hands in front of him. "It's a lot to handle. But we were all just like you once, including me." he smiled, like the cracking of granite. The Winter Soldier tugged his bonds petulantly, his gaze cold and unblinking.

"Believe it or not, Barnes, we've had worse than you. Most of them have worse experiments than that contraption you have, experiments on their DNA." This caught the Winter Soldier by surprise. He thought the most they could do was graft machine to flesh. He thought he was alone in this world.

"They've all been brainwashed more times than they can count, not that they would like to. They've been in cryofreeze states so long and so often that some suffered from freezer burn. Think you've had it worse? You're wrong. One might even say you're lucky." the man gave him a hard look. His low, gravelly voice fell heavily on his ears. He tried to deny what he was telling him, and almost did, before there was a knock at the door. Both flinched, but it was the man who recovered first. "Enter."

Two other black-garbed captors - different ones - deposited a wriggling mass on the ground with a _thud_. Muffled curses streamed from the black sack, which thrashed like a hooked fish.

"This one was following him." one of the male captors informed him. The older man nodded and worked the tie loose and pulled the black sack down. The infuriated face of a red-haired woman emerged, a hateful gleam in her jade eyes. She was bound and gagged more heavily than the Winter Soldier, but looked as though she had been pulled out of a mission. Empty holsters on her belt and legs told that much, but her most striking feature were her eyes. Green and slanted, with a slitted pupil like a cat's. She also had ears, still in their customary place on a human, which were currently pinned to the sides in anger. When she hissed, she revealed pointed canines.

The Winter Soldier stared at the cat-woman who had evidently been following him. He didn't recognize her, and even with brainwashing, he couldn't possibly have forgotten her. The man examined her face, but if he were searching for any information beyond the obvious, he didn't find it. He nodded curtly to the two captors, who inclined their heads and pulled the top of the sack back over her head. She kicked with both feet but only hit air as they dragged her away. The man turned back to the Winter Soldier, a thoughtful look in his eyes. He clucked his tongue, as if to say _I told you so_, then turned back to his desk.

"So here's the situation. We'll get you your memories back, reform you into someone who can be trusted to do grocery shopping, and in turn you'll help find and destroy those that did this, and rescue anyone else. Seem fair?" the man said. The Winter Soldier did not hesitate in responding.

"And if I refuse?" The man chuckled.

"No one has yet refused the return of their memories, and no one will. After that, they know what their captors did to them, and most are here for retribution." he winked, and the Winter Soldier felt his metal fingers compressing around the arm rest. The man was right. His priorities were memory restoration, and after that, all of his hatred and frustration and confusion were molded into one bit pile of revenge. "Of course, we can't keep you here permanently. Some leave as soon as all identified with them directly are dead, and they go through a psyche evaluation to determine if they're… Er, sane enough. If you are, you're free to go. If not, we recommend places you could stay. Some choose to stay their whole lives. They've dedicated them to our cause, and they're called the Black Ledgers. You might even see a few." the man paused, then walked around the back of his desk and retrieved a thick file. The Winter Soldier glimpsed "James Buchanan Barnes" stamped on the front and assumed it was a compilation of any assassinations linked to him.

"You have quite a history, Mr. Barnes." he leafed through the file, pausing to read small tidbits of information, then moving on. "We could use a man like you." The Winter Soldier fidgeted in his chair. The man peered over the top of the file but made no comment.

"I'll do it." He said suddenly, a pained expression on his face.

"Do what?" the man asked.

"I want my memories back." he said stubbornly, like a child denied his favorite food. The man smiled.

"Did you think we really expected you to refuse?"

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	2. Chapter 2

**A/N - **_I wasn't really planning on making another time-devoted story, but I guess that's what this fic has become…_

**Chapter 2**

He felt controlled. Manipulated. Deceived. The situation was frustratingly out of his grasp. He hated it when he wasn't in control. As the others untied him, he briefly considered taking them out and leaving, but if all three were reformed super soldiers such as himself, he would be hard-pressed to make it out the door.

The three seemed wary of him as well, as if they expected him to do just that. The Winter Soldier thought that there must have been several others who attempted to do the same, possibly even themselves.

They led him down a corridor, two standing on either side of him and one bringing up the rear. The gray, featureless walls were broken occasionally by a heavy iron door, secured with several keypads and no handles.

One of the guards on the side turned to face him. He or she - he couldn't tell - seemed to smile underneath their facemasks. "You'll like it here. After you reconcile with your memories, of course. That's the worst part." the voice was masculine, but seemingly prepubescent. His other guard shivered.

"Definitely not pleasant." this one, a female, said.

"I'll vouch for that." the rear guard piped in.

"But it gets better." the male reassured him. The Winter Soldier tried not to think about it. He knew what HYDRA did to him was bad - even a lifetime of memory wiping couldn't erase the feelings there - but what exactly they did was still shrouded in darkness.

"You won't get all your memories back," the female continued, "But a fair amount of them. And some of them won't even feel real." she frowned as she recalled one such memory to mind. "They're all… clear." she tried to explain, fumbling for the words. The other two nodded their agreement.

"Will I regret it?" the Winter Soldier finally asked. The male hesitated.

"Some do. But they get used to it." he finally said. "I didn't. And my guess is you won't either."

* * *

Several more corridors later, they came to one longer than the rest. The doors were less heavily barred, and metal nameplates were screwed to the doors. They led him to a compartment with no engravings and with a keypad instead of a doorknob.

"All new recruits are put in solitary until they're stable enough to bunk with others." the male explained. He punched in several numbers and the door slid open, revealing a metal bed bolted to the floor and a latrine.

"Don't worry, the other compartments are much more attractive." the woman smiled beneath her facemask, gesturing for him to proceed inside. The Winter Soldier glanced down the hall but proceeded in anyway. The door slid shut and bolted with finality as he sat on the bed, which was surprisingly comfortable, and took off his boots, placing them neatly beside the door.

* * *

He woke later, though he could tell how much later, tangled in the sheets and screaming hoarsely as a nightmare ripped through him. While he was now awake, flashes of it still plagued his vision, and in the confusion, he tumbled off the bed, still curled in a fetal position as aftershocks coursed through his system. Adrenaline still high, he didn't notice that he bumped his head on the bedstead until he slowly unclenched his muscles and heaved himself upright. He rubbed the back of his head, which he knew would be sore in the morning, and sat down on the mattress, his face in his hands.

That nightmare wasn't just snippets of his botched mission on the helicarrier. It wasn't so much the look that the Bridge Man had given him, nor the shards of glass that pricked him through his suit, but the _feelings_ that it gave him. Guilt was overwhelmingly there, but so was sadness, longing, and several others that he couldn't identify. The nightmare had left him with a seemingly unreachable void where he knew something was supposed to go, and he ground his bionic arm into the mattress in frustration at his inability to fill it.

These people, this underground order of rehabilitated assassins and super soldiers should help him. They promised. They would give him back his memories, and he would get his vengeance. On those that gave him this accursed arm, wiped his mind until it was nothing but moldable mush, and froze him like a hunk of meat.

But then what?

He refused to think about what would happen afterwards. Should he find the Bridge Man? Become a Black Ledger? He was too tired and too disturbed to think about these things at the moment. He supposed he would decide once he reconciled with his lost memories. Maybe then he would learn all about the Bridge Man and his connection with his past. Maybe then he'd figure out the significance of the woman in the crowd, or the fall from a train, the nickname Bucky, and a room described as red, but very clearly made of gray concrete.

He stretched out on the bed, trying to remember the last time he was allowed to sleep.

* * *

The Winter Soldier supposed it was morning, but he couldn't tell because his compartment didn't have any windows. He relieved himself, slipped on his boots, sat on the bed, and waited.

After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and a black-garbed assassin entered, carrying a tray of food. It was in small portions: warm oatmeal, an apple, and a glass of orange juice. The person set it down on his bed, then removed their hood.

The female was about as tall as he was, with long black hair tied in a messy bun, but her most intriguing feature was her face. A jagged, puckered pink scar separated smooth perfect skin from rough lizard-like scales. It was not a seamless union, quite like his robotic arm, and it made her whole face look lopsided. One eye was a slitted green, and the pupil not only contracted and dilated but rotated and zoomed. The other was a nondescript brown, but both sparkled with curiosity and mischief.

"So you're the Winter Soldier?" she asked, her voice surprisingly high in pitch and sounding somewhat innocent, like a child. The Winter Soldier averted his gaze, but nodded slowly. The female cocked her head as she studied him. "What's your chosen name?" she asked.

"My chosen name?" he asked, unsure if she was testing him.

"Yea. The name you want. My name used to be the Komodo." she wrinkled her nose. "My friends call me Kiwi now, and sometimes Dodo. It sounds better, don't you think?" she asked.

The Winter Soldier considered her question carefully. No one had asked his opinion before, not that he could have given it. Was it a trick; a trap? Despite the odd nature of her name, he agreed with her. "Yes." he said quietly. The female, Kiwi, smiled broadly.

"So what's your chosen name?" she questioned again.

"I don't know." he answered, getting more confused. He was just barely grasping the concept of a name. Everyone seemed to have something different for him. The Winter Soldier, Bucky, James, Mr. Barnes. How could he possibly choose one without offending the other? And Kiwi seemed to have multiple names; should he have the same number? Kiwi's smile faded a bit, and she blushed faintly pink.

"I'm sorry, I forgot that most new recruits don't know. I'll leave you to your breakfast." she dipped her head and left, wringing her hands. The door slid shut behind her.

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	3. Chapter 3

**A/N -** _I'm in deep folks. There's no stopping now._

**Chapter 3**

Bucky finished his breakfast without incident. The oatmeal was bland and tasteless, sticking to the roof of his mouth like peanut butter. He finished most of the orange juice but saved the apple for later. He realized how big a show of trust it was to leave him with the tray and the spoon. Even a fool could have ground the edge of the spoon to a serviceable knife if they had the patience and inclination. A few hours passed before the door rumbled and opened, revealing the man from before and four guards in black, their facemasks on.

"Hello Mr. Barnes." the man greeted. The Winter Soldier gave him a terse nod. "If you're willing, we'll start the memory restoration process today." The Winter Soldier nodded again, standing slowly and following the man down the hall. They exited the hall containing living compartments before joining what appeared to be a main hallway. Other compartment halls branched off this main one, and he was faintly impressed with the number of super soldiers and backward engineered assassins they had recovered.

The hall spilled out into another corridor, from which other halls branched. They turned down a hall towards the end. The doors here were heavily barred and imposing. They didn't have names except for letters, and no identifying characteristics otherwise. Nonetheless, their party stopped at a doorway which appeared to be opened from the inside.

A nurse stood in gray smocks, her thin, almond-shaped eyes peering suspiciously at them. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun. "Is this the Winter Soldier?" she asked. The man nodded and flashed his ID card. The nurse inspected it for several seconds before nodding sharply and moving aside to let them enter.

The room was bare and utilitarian, like his compartment and the man's office. In the middle stood a metal padded chair with an arm-like apparatus projecting from a headrest. One wall was a window that looked into a control room. The man and the four guards led the Winter Soldier, who was somewhat alarmed, to the chair. The nurse removed his shirt and started sticking radio-transmitting heart and breathing monitors to his chest. He gingerly sat down and almost panicked when they began strapping his arms and legs into the chair.

"Don't worry." the nurse said crisply. "There should be only a slight pinch as we synch your brain waves." so far, the machine was almost identical to the one used to wipe his memory, and he tried to quench horrible thoughts of being inducted back into HYDRA. The nurse folded the arms over his head so they encompassed the sides of his head. She pressed a few buttons on the side of the chair and there was a slight pressure as the suction adhered them to his head. His ears tickled as two probes inserted themselves in his ears, and there was indeed a slight pinch as an electric current connected the two probes.

The nurse nodded to the gathering, and the man dismissed the guards. The man and nurse opened a door and stepped into the control room. She fiddled with several things behind the windows, and her voice crackled over a speaker directly in his ear. She sounded like she was speaking on a phone with several objects up her nose. "We'll start with a more pleasant memory to help you get acclimated to the sensation."

The Winter Soldier tried to figure out how they could differentiate between good and bad memories before there was a deep, void-like sensation opening in his mind, like a big, echo-y space. "If you feel the echo chamber, lift a finger." He lifted his pointer finger. If he turned his head enough, he could see the nurse and the man out of his peripheral vision. "That's the computer bank. You should feel a fizzy sensation in your head. That's the program scanning your brain." Indeed, as soon as she spoke, his brain seemed to vibrate, and he fought the urge to vomit. Several minutes passed before the nurse spoke again. "We're going to start with a first memory. You should feel vertigo and a slight dropping sensation." The world seemed to pinch in on itself even as she spoke, as if being sucked into a void. Then the colors started to flash different shades, reversing themselves in sickening, vertigo-inducing displays. Her voice buzzed in his ear but he didn't comprehend as he, too, was sucked in until he viewed the world again.

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	4. Chapter 4

**A/N -** _There's going to be a lot of descriptions that don't make a lot of sense since I'm writing this based brain workings, and they're a little difficult to put on paper. Since memories can't really be translated into clear-cut scenes, you might be a little confused, but all I can say is that he *is* getting his memories back._

**Chapter 4**

_Fuzzy and warm, but some things were in lucid clarity._

_A **face**, thin and pale, the _body_ scrawny and **malnourished**._

_Even as he watched, it slid out of focus, as if a camera were adjusting the zoom._

_Now the room was in sharp relief, the dresser in the corner, **clothes** neatly folded._

_"You don't have to stay here, I could have **offered** _you_ my place."_

_"Nah **Bucky**, you don't _have_ to."_

_ A sigh of **exasperation**._

_**Concern**. Annoyance. But _playful_, as if he always did this - that little shit - and **love**._

_"I need a _little_ help here, **Buck**."_

_Time to lift the heavy box._

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	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Bucky sputtered as he surfaced from the forced memory, struggling against his bonds. His brain still tingled and there were flashes of pain where new memories were uncovered, filling previously vacant niches in his mind. He calmed down, trying to slow his racing heart. His fingers twitched as he felt the electricity shut off and the probes extract themselves with maddening slowness.

"Raise a finger if you can hear me." said the nurse. Bucky flipped up his middle finger, and he heard the man chuckle dimly as he entered the room. There was a sound like a suction cup as the headpieces were removed, and Bucky rolled his head and shoulders.

"Mr. Barnes?" the man asked, hovering over him. The nurse undid the restraints and Bucky sat up, digging a finger in his ear to get rid of the itchy feeling still in his canal. He cried out in shock when the metal scraped his ear.

He had completely forgotten the metal arm.

"Mr. Barnes?" the man repeated.

"I'm fine." the Winter Soldier replied.

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	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

He looked forward to the sessions as much as he wished he could stay in his compartment, but the Winter Soldier was nothing if not determined, and he doggedly pursued his quest for self-knowledge despite the increasingly dark material. One of the worst memories to date was one of him watching a friend being dragged out of the battlefield, a bloody pulp of his former self and barely recognizable as a human being.

He knew they were holding some memories back. Gaps in his internal timeline that couldn't be filled, incongruity, and sudden changes in some memories left him no doubt. He asked the nurse about it one day before a session. In her typical brusque manner, she explained that they were saved for later, when worse memories might make him forget who he was. They wanted a solid base so his identity would be able to cope. It made sense, but if anything it frustrated him more than before.

As he continued with the training, he remembered who the Bridge Man was as a person, but much to his disappointment, his name eluded him. Though he could recall a face and a personality, he couldn't grasp a name. He learned that he was the first super soldier experiment, and one of the only ones to get it right. He fought nazis with him, alongside others who called themselves the Howling Commandos, a ragtag group of specialist soldiers that he had grown close with.

Sometimes memories came naturally. As he shuffled through new ones, others sprang into existence of their own accord, and it pleased him immensely when this happened. They usually weren't anything significant, just a backstory to another memory or a snippet of detail, but it made him proud all the same.

A time came when the Boss allowed him to join others. Though the nurse said that darker memories were next on the list, the man thought it would be a good idea for him to meet others before those memories resurfaced. The nurse agreed so, with an escort, he was led down to the cafeteria for lunch one morning.

As soon as he stepped in, the chatter ceased and every pair of eyes snapped to him. He felt like the time in high school when he walked into the cafeteria with a huge wet blotch on his crotch from a malfunctioning water fountain. Conversation resumed at a slower pace as he filed into line and got chicken fingers and steamed broccoli.

"Hello!" the cheery, high voice of Kiwi said. He barely acknowledged her as he grabbed a fork from a pile. Kiwi followed him like an incessant puppy dog, babbling about god knows what until he seated himself reluctantly at the emptiest table he could find, with Kiwi next to him. The others at the table eyed him warily as he sat at the far end but ultimately ignored him. He had trouble believing that every single person here was a super soldier experiment gone wrong. If they had as much fury as he did, how come none of them were killing the others?

He picked at his broccoli, only nibbling the end of a chicken finger before another tray clattered on the table and the chair opposite him pulled out with a squeak and a considerable weight settled in it. He looked up from his tray to see a hulking monolith. He was at least seven feet tall, with ebony skin that gleamed as if oiled. Veins as thick as pipes stood rigid on his bulging muscles. His hands were the size of trash can lids, each finger thicker than a regular forearm. His head looked oddly small, like a coconut perched on top of a massive boulder.

Kiwi giggled.

The man - if he could be called a man - turned to face her, an unreadable expression on his blunt features. "Why do you laugh?" he asked in an impossibly deep voice. The table had gone silent. Others took the cue and whispered amongst themselves.

"Your head is small." Kiwi giggled, oblivious to the potential danger. The imposing dark man regarded her with a look akin to rage before his face split into a wide smile and he bellowed a deep, sonorous laugh that shook the table. The others cracked grins and the conversation resumed, albeit rather restrained.

"They called me the Mountain." he extended a massive hand and shook Kiwi's entire arm.

"That's rather a mouthful. Can I call you Monty?" Kiwi asked. The Mountain boomed again.

"You may call me whatever you like, little gecko." Monty chuckled, and it sounded like an avalanche. "And you." Monty turned his head, veins and tendons showing in sharp relief on his neck. "What are you called?"

He hesitated. He was torn between saying the Winter Soldier, Bucky, or James; his childhood names or the one that was branded on him when he fell from the train. One was certainly a mouthful and bound to be shortened by Kiwi or Monty, and he still felt some sentimentality to the only connection he had with that side of his past. He didn't want it to be crudely butchered by anyone. But he also realized that the Winter Soldier and Bucky were just two sides of the same coin: one a ruthless killing machine, the other a warm and compassionate human being. And he wanted to be human again.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes. But you can call me Bucky." he said, a hint of a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. Kiwi grinned and Monty nodded.

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	7. Chapter 7

**A/N -** _I've had a lot of difficulty choosing names and titles, both for Bucky and Kiwi and the rest because they really don't know what to call themselves and they only just barely understand their significance. I think of them as children, and since all of their experience has been destroyed or removed, they're essentially two or three year olds, depending on how long they've gone without brainwashing._

**Chapter 7**

The nurse took special pains with adjusting his restraints one day, even adding extra straps on his bionic arm and torso, which she never did. Her face was even more solemn than usual, and pinched as if in pain. The man was also there, hovering as he usually did, but without much of his good humor.

"What are your names?" Bucky asked, not knowing what else to say. The nurse paused, lips pursed.

"People call me the Boss. Sometimes just 'the Man.'" he said, but with no customary closing smile.

"Lucy." the nurse said quickly, almost so Bucky didn't catch it. "These memories are buried pretty deep, and often your body doesn't want to let go. It's going to be painful retrieving them and painful reliving them. You're going to surface and likely not know who I am or where you are. You might not even believe this -" she gestured around the room "- is real." Bucky swallowed thickly.

The Boss nodded silently, then as if he couldn't bear it, left the restoration room, which was odd, since he usually stayed on the observation deck. Lucy finished a buckle and the arms on the side of the chair once again clamped to his head, the ear probes worming down his canal and the familiar pinch of synchronization connecting them. The last restraint was a wide, padded band that went around his head, securing it to the headrest of the chair. She left without preamble.

Bucky shifted in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position as his brain was scanned and colors shifted and the world swirled around him.

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	8. Chapter 8

**A/N - **_Major M-rated content coming up, and it won't be pretty._

**Chapter 8**

_Lucid_ _like _pain_. _

_Clear as crystal._

_Colors __**vibrant**_ _and __saturated__._

_But not many to be had._

Pain _on the left __shoulder__, muted by __**drugs**__._

_They_ _had _cut _off most the __**day**_ _before._

A face swam in front of his vision, murky and indistinct. It shined a bright light in each of his eyes and burbled incomprehensible chatter that sounded too deep and too slow. Hands grabbed his shoulders

_Ouch_

and shoved him back in the chair, securing his body with tight leather straps. The chair tilted back and he had the uncomfortable sensation of falling. He tried to wriggle free of his restraints but they were too tight for him to do much more than flex his intact fingers. A large, oblong metal object entered the corner of his vision.

_Bright __**metal**__arm_.

The arm was brought to his severed stump of a left arm. It was like a sleeve that ended just below the shoulder.

_Synch_

_**Pain**_

_Sensors __stabbing_ _into his arm like __**needles**_

_Burrowing_ _beneath _skin

_Twisting_muscle _fibers_

_Groaning_ _as it __**hit**_ _bone_

_**Pain**_

_**Pain**_

_**Pain**_

_Dulled_

_**Pain**_

He must have screamed at some point

_Attaching to neurons that __burned_ _like __**fire**_

"Complete." The man touched his arm, which still throbbed. Someone grimaced.

"Never going to stay on like that. Have team

new arm that goes all the way up

whole new arm, yea?"

"No, cap it, remove

lots - strength."

**Good**"

The chair tipped back again

tubes

shoved up his nose and down his

throat

_I'm still awake_

_I'm still awake_

I'm still awake!

_PANIC_

_Where am I?_

"Patience, Winter Soldier."

**Thanks for sticking with me, this wasn't an easy chapter to write and it probably wasn't an easy chapter to read. Please follow/favorite and leave a review!**


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